Why Alien: Covenant Will Make You Reconsider Prometheus

“You want me to get competitive? I can get competitive,” Ridley Scott jokes when asked about the films—Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien: Resurrection—that were made between his groundbreaking 1979 Alien and 2012’s Prometheus. “During all of it, no one ever asked why was this ever started and who created it. You’d think that would be the first place to start when you’re writing a bloody screenplay.”

After returning to the world of Xenomorphs and Chestbursters that he created wth the divisive Prometheus, Scott is back again with Alien: Covenant, becoming the first director in the 40-year franchise history to direct back-to-back installments. On its way into theaters May 19, Covenenant swung by the SXSW Film Festival Friday night, where Scott and stars Katherine Waterston and Danny McBride were on hand to debut new footage for a captivated Texas audience.

Unwilling to see the franchise come to what he considered an ignominious end with 2004’s Alien v. Predator, Scott is in the process of creating a resurrection of his very own, with plans for what he says could be several more installments in this new Alien era.

But this new Scott-fueled vision of the franchise is missing the unifying force of the original four movies: Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley. There are echoes of her in Noomi Rapace’sPrometheus character Elizabeth Shaw as well as Waterston’s Daniels in Covenant “because, boobs,” the actress wryly jokes. “Ripley didn’t have boobs!” Scott chimes in. But it’s actually actor Michael Fassbender playing a pair of A.I. units—the platinum blond David and the mousier brunette Walter—who is the new “Ripley” of this series. “It’s the A.I. that’s the real connective tissue of this franchise,” Waterston observes. “People keep saying I’m the Ripley. I’m not. It’s Fassbender.” (Scott also addressed the rumor that Waterston’s character was related to Weaver’s Ripley. “No,” he asserted, “She’s herself.”)

Fassbender’s David will bridge the gap between the two films as Covenant kicks off with a prologue (not to be confused with the four-minutes of footage marked “Prologue” that is currently online), showing the origins of the unnerving blond android. Scott drew inspiration from a viewing of 2001: A Space Odyssey when, he says, as a young man he “gawped and gawped” at Hal’s famous, unblinking red lens. “You see nothing but the eye” of this creature, Scott marveled.

“We start Covenant,” he continues, ”with a really clever prologue that settles—once and for all—who David really is.” The sequence begins on a “big beautiful blue eye—you see every vein” and over that shot audiences will hear footsteps approach. “How do you feel?” a voice asks. “Alive,” the owner of the eye responds. Scott explains that the prologue reveals Guy Pearce’sPrometheus character, Peter Weyland, as a younger, 40-year-old man (Pearce wore heavy old-age make-up for the 2012 film) whom the newly-born David calls “father.” Scott promises this sequence will “really get people going because it’s fucking smart for a change.” Scott and McBride both believe Covenant will cast Prometheus in a new and better light.

None of the prologue Scott described was in the 15-minutes of gore-laced footage he, Waterston, Fassbender, and McBride showed to the packed Paramount Theater late on Friday night. The first sequence was a showcase for the film’s stunning cinematography as well as McBride’s famous comedic timing. (He had the audience howling with laughter before they started howling for a different reason.) McBride is adamant that his character, Tennessee, isn’t mere comic relief—but acknowledges he’s the likeliest to make light of the horrible situation they find themselves in. Scott—who blended humor and space terror so well in 2015’s The Martian—says Tennessee’s demeanor has its roots in Harry Dean Stanton’s wise-cracking space trucker from the original Alien. That humor, McBride explains, makes the characters more human which, of course, makes their terror more real.

That terror was the focus of the second section of footage that debuted Friday night, which had audiences squirming at the gory debut of Covenant’s “Backbursters.” But Scott chose to end the exhibition with a final sequence featuring Billy Crudup’s Christopher Oram trusting in and being led astray by Fassbender in full creep mode. It’s a scenario we’ve seen over and over again in the Alien franchise: the treacherous A.I. But as opposed to 1979 when Scott kicked all this off, dangerously smart artificial intelligence is no longer the imagined horror of the distant future. “It’s reality—it’s now,” he told us.